“Why? Because we kicked them under the bus in 1863,” Cummings said, noting the year slavery ended. “Do we have a moral responsibility? Jesus Christ says so. Don’t you think so?”

Moreover, Cummings wants to know “What are [we]going to do about it?”

Cummings will be the keynote speaker at an April 1 symposium to be held at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus titled, “Slavery on the Cross: Catholics and the ‘Peculiar Institution,’ Praxis and Practice.” He said he will discuss the same question with academics and activists sitting on three separate panels.

Bentley Anderson, S.J., associate professor of history and associate chair of the Department of African and African American Studies, which is co-hosting the event, said that the keynote talk will be preceded by two morning panels that will contextualize the topic, and followed by an afternoon panel that will address its legacy.

“We’ve invited scholars who deal with questions of race and religion from the past and into the present,” he said. “And we’ll have folks from the New York region who are actually putting their faith into practice by addressing issues of systemic racism.”

For Cummings, addressing the legacy of racism has become the culmination of a life’s work. After earning a law degree from Loyola University New Orleans and practicing for several years, he purchased a sugar cane plantation near New Orleans as an investment. But as he began to delve into the plantation’s history, he said he was shocked by his own ignorance of the institution of slavery.

Today, the Whitney Plantation is the nation’s first museum fully dedicated to the history of slavery, said Cummings. The plantation now celebrates the strength of the men and women who toiled in its fields, and it displays a wide variety historic items relating to slavery.

An Irish Catholic who had a modest upbringing in New Orleans, Cummings said his own working class family has no direct lineage to slave owners. But he believes all Americans must contend with the legacy.

“We’re all recovering racists because we were raised in this place,” he said.

Father Anderson, who also grew up in New Orleans, said he met Cummings when he toured the plantation with his parents. The two began a discussion about the church’s history with slavery, in which Father Anderson said Cummings did indeed ask him “What are you going to do about it?”

The April 1 symposium evolved from that conversation, said Father Anderson.

“He challenged me on a faith level and academic level, and what I can do is bring people together to discuss, reflect, and act,” said Father Anderson.

Cummings said he struggles on a personal level with the moral conundrum of the church’s role in slavery. He hopes the symposium will raise consciousness among contemporary Americans that, although they may not bear the responsibility for slavery, they must take responsibility for its legacy.

“We have put slavery in the rearview mirror,” he said. “It was done on someone else’s watch—not so far back we can’t see it—but we have to look forward and find out what our obligation is to its descendants.”

The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Corrigan Conference Center.

Participants:
Thomas Murphy, S.J., Seattle University
M. Shawn Copeland, Ph.D., Boston College
Bryan Massingale, S.T.D., Fordham University
James O’Toole, Ph.D., Boston College
John Cummings, Whitney Plantation Museum
Albert Holtz, O.S.B., Newark Abbey – Newak, NJ
Gregory Chisholm, S.J., St. Charles Borromeo – Harlem, NY
Maurice Nutt, C.Ss.R., Xavier University of Louisiana Institute
Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Ph.D., Fordham University

Co-sponsored by: Theology Dept., Political Science Dept., Philosophy Dept., Communication and Media Studies, Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, The Jesuits of Fordham University.

Co-Sponsored by the English Department and Creative Writing Program at Fordham University

Saturday, April 24, 2010 | Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus Atrium

For Registration Please Call: (717) 357-9609. You will also need to complete this form (includes complete schedule) and bring it with you to the symposium. There is a $150 attendance fee.

Keynote Speaker: Robert Atwan, series editor, Best American Essays. Featured speakers include: Jerald Walker, Vivian Gornick, Brian Doyle, Lia Purpura and Emily Grosholz. Panelists include: Paul Lisicky, New York University; Mimi Schwartz, Richard Stockton College; Michael Steinberg, Pine Manor College; Elizabeth Stone, Fordham University; and Linda Underhill, Chatham University.

About the Presenters and Panelists

Robert Atwan is the series editor of Best American Essays, which he founded in 1985. He has edited five college anthologies and textbooks, seven poetry anthologies, and a short story collection. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Iowa Review, the Kenyon Review, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, River Teeth, and elsewhere.

Brian Doyle is the author of seven works of nonfiction, including The Grail, The Wet Engine, and Leaping: Revelations & Epiphanies, as well as two collections of “proems.” A novel, Mink River, is forthcoming in fall 2010. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, Gourmet, Harper’s, Orion, the Times of London, and elsewhere. He is the editor of Portland Magazine.

Vivian Gornick is the author of many books, including Women in Science, Fierce Attachments, The Situation and the Story, Approaching Eye Level, and The End of the Novel of Love. Her essays and articles have appeared in the Nation, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at the New School.

Emily Grosholz is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Feuilles/Leaves; three books of philosophy; and the editor of essay collections on Simone de Beauvoir, W. E. B. DuBois, Maxine Kumin, and the philosophy of mathematics. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Hudson Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She teaches at Pennsylvania State University.

Lia Purpura is the author of two collections of essays, On Looking and Increase, and several collections of poems, including King Baby, Stone Sky Lifting, and Brighter the Veil. Her work has appeared in AGNI, the Georgia Review, Orion, the New Republic, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Loyola University and the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program.

Jerald Walker is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Redemption. His essays have appeared in Best African American Essays, Best American Essays, Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry, Chronicle of Higher Education, the Iowa Review, Missouri Review, Mother Jones, North American Review, Oxford American, and elsewhere. He teaches at Bridgewater State College.

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy and Famous Builder. A new novel, Lumina Harbor, is forthcoming. His work has appeared in Boulevard, Flash Fiction, Hotel Amerika, Open House, Ploughshares, Short Takes, and many other anthologies and magazines. He teaches at New York University.

Mimi Schwartz is the author of five books, including Good Neighbors, Bad Times. Echoes of My Father’s German Village; Thoughts from a Queen-sized Bed; and, with Sondra Perl, Writing True: the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Creative Nonfiction, the Missouri Review, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She is Professor Emerita at Richard Stockton College.

Mike Steinberg is founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. He has written or co-written five books, including a memoir, Still Pitching, and, with Robert Root, an anthology, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction. He is writer-in-residence in the Solstice/Pine Manor College low-residency MFA program.

Elizabeth Stone is the author of Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us, The Hunter College Campus Schools for the Gifted, and A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from Her Student. Her personal essays and reportage have appeared in Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches at Fordham University.

Linda Underhill is the author of two collections of essays, The Unequal Hours: Moments of Being in the Natural World and The Way of the Woods: Journeys through American Forests. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA program at Chatham University and at Corning Community College.